HC Deb 22 April 1996 vol 276 cc49-50W
Mr. Blunkett

To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many of the providers participating in phase 1 of the voucher scheme will be inspected(a) within three months, (b) within six months, (c) within nine months and (d) within 12 months of beginning to operate under the voucher scheme. [25605]

Mr. Robin Squire

Inspections by registered nursery education inspectors cannot begin until after the Nursery Education and Grant-Maintained Schools Bill has received Royal Assent. The Office for Standards in Education's initial planning estimate is that all voluntary and private providers will be inspected within their first year of operation—that is, by April 1997.

Mr. Blunkett

To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment (1) how many providers who have been given initial validation in respect of phase 1 of the voucher scheme will provide (a) one session a week, (b) two sessions a week, (c) three sessions a week, (d) four sessions a week and (e) five sessions a week; [25601]

(2) what proportion of vouchers in phase 1 of the voucher scheme have been redeemed in respect of places (a) in the private sector, (b) in the voluntary sector and (c) in the maintained sector. [25598]

Mr. Squire

Information on where parents have chosen to redeem nursery education vouchers, and on the number of sessions provided, will be available once vouchers returned from providers have been analysed.

Mr. Spearing

To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if she will set out the calculation which underlay the ministerial statement that under the scheme of vouchers for pre-school education a local authority will be better off if just one additional four-year-old is able to use its provisions. [25851]

Mr. Squire

In phase 2, the deduction from each local authority's budget will be the voucher value multiplied by the number of four-year-olds in maintained provision in that local education authority area in the 1995–96 academic year, taking into account the number of terms for which each child attends. If the LEA recruits the same number of four-year-olds in the same termly pattern, all this money will be recovered. If the local authority provides for an additional four-year-old, an additional voucher, or a portion of that sum, depending on the number of terms that child is in school, will pass to the LEA. The arrangements in phase 1 are similar, except for an adjustment to allow for four-year-old pupils resident outside the phase 1 areas and who therefore do not hold vouchers.

Mr. Blunkett

To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many institutions in the(a) private, (b) voluntary and (c) maintained sectors have applied for initial validation in phase 1 of the voucher scheme; and how many such institutions did not previously provide places for four-year-olds. [25604]

Mr. Squire

Six hundred and twenty-eight private and voluntary sector and 494 maintained sector providers have been initially validated to date. Forty of these did not have any four-year-olds on roll at the time of registration, but had capacity to provide for them.